I've recently begun playing again after being away a few years. Starting the game in 1930 and using timeline, there is no vehicle available for the cotton field. The game says bags or piece goods, I have piece goods but no bags and the piece goods vehicle simply will not load. The version is 111.0 - Nov 1 2011 - r4911
Any suggestions on how I can fix this?
Also would like to get rid of the graphic for the sign. I like having trees in the cities and use signs to keep them from being built over but the signs often ruin the effect.
I checked "search engine looking for a transport game" but that is not entirely true. I was actually searching for any open source game after being unable to find any commercial game I liked. Really I prefer a game that has more to it than just transportation but apparently no one has made that yet with the exception of the stock market stuff which I found only slightly interesting.
Don't you guys spend ages making your cities look better?
Yes. It is the only graphical reward for playing the game. Well, maybe not. I actually like to see those little peeps spreading out when a bus or train stops.
Again I apologize for not understanding. If what I say here is not pertinent, blame it on my lack of understanding. There are no goods stations near any of the bus stops. All the stops are at the city halls and all the cities are ones I created in public service mode so they are still little. In fact it is only 1934 in game.
Oh I think I do understand. You are saying that those 50 p****engers or whatever quantity in Davo for Cody could have come from somewhere else and been merged, then just listed as p****engers going to Cody? If that is the case, I had not thought or known that was possible. Thanks.
prissi, I have no intercity stops. Please look at this example from my current game. Davo is directly connected to Mars Hill, Cody and Wesley. There are other cities beyond those.
Davo City Hall stop: 115 p****engers waiting 48 p****engers > Cody City Hall stop 2 p****engers > Jolly Alice City Hall Stop via Cody City Hall stop 22 p****engers > Mars Hill City Hall stop 24 p****engers > Philippi 01_City_1 stop via Cody City Hall stop 8 p****engers > Tacoma Mama City Hall stop Cody City Hall stop 11 p****engers > Wesley City Hall stop
Cody City Hall stop: 70 p****engers waiting 8 p****engers > Jolly Alice City Hall stop 29 p****engers > Philippi 01_City_1 stop via Tacoma Mama City Hall stop 33 p****engers > Scott City Hall stop via Davo City Hall stop
There are two buses running between Davo and Cody. One is enroute to Davo carrying the following: 17 p****engers > Wesley City Hall stop via Davo City Hall stop
The other bus is enroute to Cody and carrying the following: 33 p****engers > Tacoma Mama City Hall stop via Cody City Hall stop
If I understand you correctly and you are saying city B generates the same number of p****engers for city A as city A generates for B, then this is clearly not the case in this example.
Thanks Combuijs for making that clear. I do understand that. Here is what I'm saying. Even if the game generates one return p****enger for one created in A, that p****enger that was created in A most likely will not have a destination of B but rather C or E or F. This means that even if the return p****enger is created going back to A, it can take quite awhile for him to get to B which means the bus traveling between A and B is carrying very few p****engers in the meantime.
Until I started this thread I did not understand this. I thought these p****engers were just being randomly generated at different stops and would immediately create a bus to carry them out. Of course this only served to screw up the whole system. Many thanks to both of you and I'm glad to know that return p****engers are in fact, always being generated.
*sigh* I'm sorry prissi but I don't understand what you are saying. At any rate my anti-panic strategy seems to be working. For now it is not necessary that I understand what is happening, only what will work.
I apologize if I've misled any newbie-than-I-am with what I've written thus far.
Based on my observations, I think it is true return trips are generated. However, what seems to be happening is this:
Extra p****engers will be generated in city A but their destination could be any stop on the map. I'm not sure where the return trips are generated from but they appear not, at least not necessarily, to be generated from City B. This means of course it takes a long time for the p****enger amounts to "level" out. I think it is also possible that those "return" generated p****engers may never be routed back to or thru city A. It seems there is just an equal number of "return" p****engers generated somewhere.
My latest thinking on this is that it is not such a bad thing and may actually simulate reality. I guess it is what Combuijs termed dynamic. I think it is fighting fires but perhaps that just makes it a different challenge from transporting goods.
I clicked SC4 although the original RailRoad Tycoon was my fav. The reason I didn't click RailRoad was I did not like the sequels at all. Actually the only thing I really liked about SC4 was creating maps. Glad I found Simutrans.
One approach could be what Dwachs hinted at. Present the player with pre-made maps like you do now but give him some additional tools to add lakes, streams and rivers. It seems to me all you would need are the terrain tools you have now and then some shore tiles and water tiles.
After all, this is almost exactly what SC4 does.
It probably would not allow for the rivers to look like they are flowing or have waterfalls but it certainly should solve to problem of determining a direction and width that looks realistic. Also it would provide a basis for further development and ideas.
After playing with this for an hour or so, it appears that the trouble I am having is a combination of what prissi and Combuijs suggested. Apparently as the cities grow and generate more p****engers, they do not grow and generate at the exact same time. You just have to wait for the returning city to catch up. The thing is if you watch it too closely, it will scare you. At least it scared me. Actually that's pretty cool.
That is some awesome pics! Shows what a little imagination can do. Thanks Igor.
When I suggested that the water only come part way up the sloped tiles I was thinking about those little depressions of 2 or 3, maybe 3 or 4, you sometimes see on the map. If I imagine these completely filled with water, it seems it would look like just green or gray tiles adjacent to blue tiles. Of course Hajo's idea of making those adjoining tiles appear depressed somewhat would, I think, be the best looking solution. I was just thinking about a way to do it without the need for painting more tiles for the shore.
After reading all this I think possibly the trouble I'm having is that I'm watching the stops too closely and adjusting too soon. Especially after what prissi said about the month thingy. I'll try the same strategy and allow more time for the process.
Well, then your capacity is too low. Add more busses and you're fine.
Yes Combuijs but here is the sticky wicket. Those p****engers from city A want to go to city B but none at city B want to go to city A. Obviously this causes the bus line to be unprofitable.
I realize in real life public transportation is almost always unprofitable but I was really hoping not to simulate that.
EDIT: The thing I'm really trying to get at here is this. If you look at cargo transportation you can determine what vehicles, trains whatever you need to do the job. With p****engers there is no way to do this. You click on a stop to see how many p****engers are there. Basically you are just fighting fires. Where is the planning, where is the strategy? Given, there is some strategy in setting up your bus lines because some things simply will not work at all. That said it is still reactive instead of an approachable set of challenges to overcome.
I have to agree with Hood on this. When you created what p****ed for rivers in SC4, the banks of the river looked like normal sloped tiles. Heck, even in real life the river closest to me has, for the most part no distinguishing characteristic at the bank. Occasionally there will be a bit of sand or rocky place but that is mostly at a fjord.
It would make the bank look more realistic if the water came only part way up the sloped tile.
Combuijs, I don't have a clue how I could configure my system differently. My cities are all a good distance apart but not equally distant. I have no buses that travel to more than one city. They all go to the next city and then return. The way I've been handling the cities that are closer together is to put parking lots where the bus or buses wait for a period of time before departing. This works well most of the time but not all the time. Sometimes, like I said in my original post, I will have a p****enger buildup in one city that will exceed the ability of the bus or buses serving that line to carry them all.
The thing that makes this particularly troublesome is that I have noticed for the buildup group destination, the bus will take the p****engers going to all other destination(s) first. This of course exaggerates the problem making the buildup group grow very large, very fast.
Yes AP, since I start the game with no cities and add them via the public service player, I can verify that the first trip(s) often run without picking up any p****engers. In fact it was only by trial and error that I discovered if you let the buses make a second trip there will be p****engers. Maybe it is the "if you build it, they will come" thingy. BTW, this only works if the city hall is in the stop area. If the stops are for industries, forget it. Simutranians are for most part like Americans, they do not take public transportation to work. I think you are on to something about the recalculation. Since I had like a hundred p****engers going to Philippi, I clicked on the bus schedule and changed its next destination from Tacoma to Philippi just before the bus got to stop. It picked up no p****engers. So I immediately sent it back, no, nada, none. At this point I gave up and changed schedule back to Tacoma and voila, pickup.
Now I will say that things seem to go awry most often when new cities are added and this is to be expected to some extent. Still, wouldn't it be great if p****engers had a real reason to travel instead of just artificially generating them?
My fav part of this game is growing cities and from experience a good way to achieve that is p****enger travel. This is fun as well but I have to say it is still frustrating at times. Just when I have things running smoothly with parking lots for low traffic routes and bigger buses for heavier routes, I'll click on some stop and for no apparent reason it will have an inordinate number of p****engers going to some, usually, remote place.
What's up with this? Is it just the way I have my p****enger travel configured or does the game engine occasionally dump a bunch of p****engers on a stop to challenge the player? I have been maintaining a utility bus to pickup these Simutranians (my personal belief is these citizens belong to some evil cult, probably Satan worshipers and are having meetings in the most remote locations they can find, but I digress) but now there is a new wrinkle. They will only board the bus if it stops somewhere else first! Imagine that! They won't go directly from Davo to Philippi, they have to go via Tacoma. Naturally this reinforces my belief there is something sinister in their desire to travel.
Sorry if this should have been posted on the help thread. I'm entertaining the notion I'm beyond that but this post might prove me wrong. Anyway I'm curious how many people have no problem with p****enger travel and how many do. Could we have a poll? Maybe also with an option just for people who would like to see p****enger travel changed in some way.
No need to apologize VS. I realized at the time it was going off topic and also that you needed to maintain focus on the subject to ever get anything accomplished.
At some point I'm still planning to get in on the programming side of things. Until then I'll just be happy with whatever is done.
I agree with you totally about rivers. It is unrealistic and we would likely soon become dissatisfied if the rivers were not part of the total picture and that of course includes streams. My feeling is that with the graphic engine we have now it might not be possible to incorporate rivers in any way that would not have to be redone later on. But, who knows, maybe someone will come up with a clever plan...
Looks like I do not understand all the capability of the load options. So far I have only been able to set minimum load amounts and time to wait. Like AP, I've had situations where I would like to be able to load only part of the cargo that is available for shipment.
Whenever I create a new game I go into public service mode and use the terrain tool to make something akin to rivers. That's how much I like them. No doubt there are many problems creating them though. Even advanced as SC4 is, the rivers are not very realistic. From what I've seen and understand about heightmaps, water has to be no higher than altitude zero. That situation created some very nice looking cliffs in SC4 but unfortunately does not allow for realistic water wheels since there is no such thing as "fall."
I suggested in the "equatorial wind" thread that perhaps rivers could be painted on like houses, etc. VS did not reply to that suggestion so I don't know if he thought it was too stupid or is still considering it. I do think it is possible that some of these terrific artists could paint some river tiles - reference how great the fish ponds look. Maybe we could even have some tiles with water flowing and water falls. Wouldn't it be possible to do them a similar way as trucks moving or people walking?
At any rate if something like this is done or no, it would still be nice to have some water transportation that is not so expensive early on. I've found I have to have a pretty big operation to afford anything when it comes to water transportation.
I had originally moved plastic and planks from one station/bay combo (let's call it Cody station) to just a loading bay where the plastic and planks were converted to goods. At this second bay (Tacoma station) there is also a tree farm producing logs. It occurred to me (yeah I'm kinda slow sometimes), that a train would work perfectly for this situation - picking up plastic and planks at one, loading goods and logs at the other.
Please note that originally, I had trucks leaving Tacoma with the goods and delivering them to Davo. Actually these trucks also picked up plastic at Cody but that is probably not pertinent.
Anyway after I got my train going, it picked up plastic and planks at Cody, delivered them to Tacoma and picked up logs but would not get the goods, pardon the pun. Now I had already created a truck route from Cody to Davo with a truck enroute.
Any idea why the train refuses to pick up the goods? It occurred to me as I was writing this that it might be because the original routes are still intact and the trucks are running. I hope I do not have to send all those trucks to the depot and delete the truck routes before the train will pick up but if that is the problem...whatever it takes to get the job done.
z9999, In the game I'm playing now I don't have any AI players but the game engine is effectively growing the cities around the trees. I really like how it is working...
I'm guessing the version of the executable doesn't affect the file. I'm still using the same executable as I was previously. Apparently the prob I had was that the pak128 I was using was too old. Since the one you are using is, I think, newer than my current, it is anyone's guess. I can't imagine there is a tiny window where only the file will work.
I ****ume you have checked the date of the file in the pak128 directory and it is actually mobo's file there?
EDIT: BTW, you might not want to use it anyway if you need/want signs. It eliminates them.
I don't see a real problem with the system now. That said I'm a newbie and also run a small transport system so money is always tight. That's good.
However I am not at all opposed to a complex system of revenue if it is very transparent to the player. What I would like to see is when you click on an industry, there is an amount shown on the industry popup window that indicates how much that industry will pay per unit for transport to the consumer. Let the player decide if he can profitably transport the goods. Actually the player could just try it and see if the transport was profitable or if transporting at an unprofitable rate was worthwhile because of the good's impact on more advanced production.
I would ****ume that transporting goods for a long distance would pay more than transporting them a short distance but only proportionally. The amount the supplier pays could remain static throughout the game or could fluxuate. This could be an option for the player to set/change.
Of course we would need to know how much a loading bay was costing...
mobo, I downloaded the latest pak128 to start a new game. The pak I was using had been downloaded in November and when I unzipped the file to the folder there was no cursor.marked.pak in that folder. However when I went to copy your file to my newly created file folder, I got a msg asking should I overwrite. I clicked yes and just so you know, the file works perfectly with the new pak, exactly like you said it should - thanks again!
I like big maps with lots of unused landscape. It does take awhile to get familiar with the map but that is part of the fun. I guess it is an RP thing that those Simutranians really need transportation when thing are spread out. Besides it is just great watching those trains travel long distances winding around hills and through groves of trees. Actually I prefer virtual travel to the real thing...
For the simplest of reasons, I like fabio's idea of terrain based maintenance because it adds another level of decision making into the game. Would it be better to go for the added expense and distance of building a road around a desert or directly across it?
Also if, and at some point, a way and/or the approval of adding resources into the game is conceived, it could provide a difficulty for obtaining that resource, e.g. salt is found in the desert isn't it? Oh and please, please, please could we just think about a camel caravan to get that salt out of the desert? I think in some places they still do that...but I, uh, probably just dropped off the deep end with that one...
